Adam Allington, a Weekend America reporter on assignment in the Anbar province of Iraq with U.S. soldiers, writes in his latest piece on downtime for the soldiers and how they spend some of their spare time. Interestingly, the Wii is featured among their extracurricular activities.

On base, everyone carries a weapon. That’s a rule. You take it with you to the chow hall, to the gym. But, these days in Ramadi, most grunts get more use out of the imaginary guns on their gaming systems then the real deal.

[....]

At the moment however, Carr isn’t playing a shoot-em-up game. Right now he’s got something a little more relaxing, “Hooked! Real Motion Fishing.”

“It’s basically just Bass tournaments and just different relaxing fishing games, which is usually what I do when I’m in the States, which is go out and fish. And I can’t do that because we have nothing but sand.”

Allington’s article is worth a read even though it isn’t entirely focused on video games, as it’s the kind of alternative piece that we either don’t see often or may simply overlook – and it’s always interesting to get first-hand reports from a war front and to see how games culture manages to seep in.

Source: Weekend America, GamePolitics

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Posted in Journalism Video Game Media Watch by Billy Kirk No Comments Yet